Friday, April 24, 2015

“But mother, do people get possessed by
spirits of the dead?” I asked. I was eight years old then and I was frightened
of the dark. Every night diligently my mother used to apply the vibhuti (holy
ash) on my forehead before I went to bed, a habit which I have retained to this
day and did it to my children till they grew up to ask “Papa do you really
believe in all these things?” but they never objected. Even now when I visit
them I repeat the procedure and they indulge me. This habit has never left me
even after I had grown old enough to ask my mother “Do you really believe in
all these things?” But she persisted and I never objected. Habits die hard I
have learnt. On those rare occasions when I forget to do it, I would wake up in
the middle of the night from a bad dream have a drink of water, pick up the
vibhuti from the puja shelf, apply it on to my forehead and go back to bed and
invariably to a sound sleep. To this day I have not questioned this ritual for
it has become a part of my daily routine.

“Have
you been listening to your grandmother’s stories about her childhood and her
life in the village?”

“Yes
Amma, she was telling me as to how one of her friends had been possessed by an
evil spirit.”

“Oh
that’s her favorite story which she keeps repeating to everyone. Well I shall
tell her not to frighten you with such stories. You don’t have to be frightened
of anything, just repeat all the prayers I have taught you and don’t think much
about it” She replied trying to reassure me.

“But
Amma” I persisted “is it true? Have you seen anything like this?”

“Well”
she waited for some time as though in deep thought and then said “Yes I have,
but I shall tell you about it some other time” and she ended the conversation.

My
father was a man of few words and he was never really interested in any of
these things, but he did tell me once “See I have been away from the village
for a long time now. May be I have also heard about such occurrences from my
mother. I haven’t come across such cases myself. Some people believe that there
are such things and there are others who believe that these are on account of
psychological disorders. I don’t give it much thought and so should you.”

What
had once been a fear turned to curiosity as I grew older and may be bolder. But
that does not mean ‘I did not believe in all these things’. My mother did
finally relate to me some of those stories which she said she had been a
witness to. Now who would question or have reasons to doubt a mother’s word and
that to at that young age? I listened as I sat clasping her hand lest I be
borne away by an unseen hand.

“You
know I have seen my own cousin being possessed by a spirit. It stayed in her
body for twelve years before it finally left her” she said.

“But
mother how did you all know she had been possessed? How did it happen?” I
asked.

“As
usual and as was the practice she had gone to the river along with her friends
in the early morning for a bath. When she came back we found her eyes were very
red and she had high fever. The doctor was called for and he gave some
medicines to bring down the fever. All the while she had not spoken a single
word. But we knew something was wrong as her movements were not normal and
restlessness was evident. It was after the doctor had left and that my aunt
went to her and applied the vibhuti on her forehead she shouted in an unnatural
voice and in a dialect not common in our household that the ash was burning her
forehead. She knocked the container from her mother’s hand and started abusing
her. It was a completely different person we were seeing. Her face had
contorted and the soft lines had disappeared. My aunt was a strong lady and she
had seen too many of such happenings in the village to be put off. She was sure
that her daughter had been possessed. She stood there and stared at her
daughter and asked ‘Who are you?’ Her daughter replied ‘Muniamma’.

Her
friends said that she had slipped and fallen into the river while having her
bath. Though she managed to swim back, she appeared unwell and had come back
home without saying anything to them, contrary to her normal nature. It was
only later that we came to know from some of the elders in the village that the
place where she had fallen was exactly the same spot where years ago a woman belonging to another community had committed suicide by jumping into the river. Her name was
Muniamma. My aunt was now certain that it was the spirit of that dead woman
which had possessed her daughter and it fitted in with the change in
personality and the dialect in which she spoke. My cousin alternated between
periods of possession and normalcy. It was during one of those periods of
possession, when my aunt asked why her daughter was being troubled and entreated
the spirit to leave her body that she was told that the spirit had come to
stay. During such times my cousin used to be as far away from the puja room as
possible and used to close her ears when the chanting of prayers took place.

For
twelve years she remained like that. During this period countless pujas and
rituals were conducted, though the severity of the possession did not increase
and no bodily harm occurred. At last a tantric from Kerala was also called for
exorcising. We still do not know whether this had any effect, but at last one
fine day my cousin spoke saying that the spirit was leaving her body. She
returned to normalcy soon after. Of course she does not remember all that she
had said and done during her periods of possession.”

It
was the first of such stories related to me by my mother and of course my
grandmother who had even more bizarre and older stories to relate. May be these
were so deeply ingrained in my psyche that years later as an young adult I had
not shaken off the possibility of such happenings, though I was convinced that these
were due to psychological imbalances like schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder
and similar ailments. There were instances which left me wondering whether they
were dreams or a figment of my imagination but when they occurred they appeared
so real. As a young adult, while residing in the college hostel I had a strange
experience. Working late into the night to finish off the project on which I
had been working, I got up from my chair and stretched out on the bed for a
small break. I do not remember how long I lay there. I had been staring at the
ceiling listening only to the sounds of the ceiling fan when I thought I felt a
strange presence at the edge of the bed near my head as if someone was looking
down at me. I could clearly see the contours of the room in detail and the face
of my father who had long since passed away. The moment appeared frozen and I
found myself totally immobilized for some time. It was with great effort that I
was able to shake myself free and I sat up. Everything was as it was in the room, but it
took me some time to come back to normalcy. I drank some water and applied the
vibhuti which I always carried with me, on my forehead and went back to my
table to complete my work. That night I did not sleep till the early hours of
the morning. Looking back I have always had mixed feelings about the incident.
It could have been due to the images of my father which were always there in my
mind coupled may be with the many planchette sessions which me and my friends
used to indulge in, more out of curiosity then any belief. But at that time it
felt so real. One thing I was sure, that I had not fallen asleep, but may be my
mind was playing games. Whatever it was, it was eerie while it lasted.

Years
later I saw the movie ‘The Exorcist’ and a series of such films on the
paranormal, of possessions and ghosts. These were not mere grandma tales. They
were much more deeply ingrained in the human psyche. The belief in
manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread, dating back to animism
or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Despite all the predominance of rational
thinking and advancement in human knowledge, there still exists that element of
doubt on the immortality of the human soul.

I
remember the time when I was returning from Rajkot to Ahmedabad by car. It was
late into the night and suddenly I found my driver accelerating on a lonely
stretch of road on the highway near a place called Limbdi. I asked the reason
and wanted him to slow down. He said ‘Saab, there have been strange occurrences
on this stretch. I was told by a fellow driver that once when he was passing
this spot, he had heard someone tapping the rear window of the car asking the passenger
to open the door. Can you imagine Saab, someone tapping on the window of a
vehicle travelling at sixty km per hour? The passenger was in a state of shock
and the driver had the sense to speed away. Such happenings have been reported
by others also.” Naturally I spent the rest of my journey looking out for the
unknown visitor. One does not give credence to such things. After all my
rational mind said at that time of the night it is but natural that one is
overcome by drowsiness and imagines things that are not there. Also that
stretch of road was notorious for late night road accidents, a monotonous long
stretch when drivers tend to feel the drowsiness more and lose control of the
vehicle. The very fact that accidents did occur there was again attributed to
paranormal activity. The mind plays games but are we ready to accept that is
the case.

Monday, April 6, 2015

In the past ten days there have been two articles of note in ‘The Times
Of India’ Hyderabad edition which serve as precursors to the obituaries that
would follow of the Bookstores that we have grown up with and got used to.
Sadly yes, it is like the death of a dear and near one and the grief that
follows. The first one on 25th March 2015 announced ‘Iconic City Bookstore To
Shut Down Shutters’. Since it is reported from Hyderabad anyone familiar with
the city will immediately be able to place it. “Shop in Abids to make way for
swanky shopping mall” the old makes place for the new, bringing an end to a
generation that found unbounded pleasure while browsing through the books stocked
neatly on dust free and polished shelves, and attended to by a knowledgeable
owner whose love for books seemed equal if not more than what you had prided
yourself with. AA Husain and Co. had been in existence the since the mid-forties
of the last century and was turned into a bookstore in 1949.

The report quotes the current owner “Since 2010, the footfalls at the
bookstore have dropped drastically. I believe it is because of the spurt of
online bookstores. People find it convenient to buy books at either bookstore
chains or online stores. Business for independent sellers is no longer
profitable.” While book lovers are obviously upset those who will be most hit
are the employees of the old store. Life will no longer be the same for them.

The second which appeared on the editorial page yesterday 4th
March 2015 is by Dileep Padgaonkar ‘Browse No More – Sad but inevitable
aftermath of the closure of a great bookshop’. He refers to iconic bookshops –
one in Pune, the International Book Service located in Deccan Gymkhana and the
other La Hune that has been operating in Paris since 1949 and known for its
famous clientele “This where the Surrealists led by their, guru, Andre Breton
congregated. On any given day you could spot celebrated writers, painters and
filmmakers – Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Picasso, Max Ernst, Truffaut,
Godard etc.- intently turning the pages of a book.” I also quote below the last
portion of the article by Padgaonkar that sort of sums it up –

“Some lament the ‘emasculation of culture’ and the ‘cancerous growth of
commercialism. Others stress the ‘inexorable logic of the market’ and the ‘democratisation
of reading’ in a digitalized universe.

What the closure of a good bookshop portends though can hardly be
denied. It deprives us of one of the gentler pleasures of life; Serendipity. This
allows you to browse through books at leisure in the hope of discovering quite
by chance, one that captivates your fancy.”

In this context I reproduce below a page from my book ‘I Am Just An
Ordinary Man’ –

“I have enjoyed browsing through the books in the bookshops, apart from
buying them. Though you have your Crosswords and Odysseys now, with their
stacks of books along with other items as a one stop buy, I miss the old
worldly charm of a Higginbotham at Madras or a Manney’s in Poona which were
dedicated to only books. But these were large stores. The books I bought in
Bombay were all from the pavement shop which you can still find when you walk
from Victoria Terminus to Flora Fountain. Many times I have stood there gazing
at the books. If what you were searching for was not available, the shopkeeper
would get it for you. I have walked those pavements any number of times when I
was in Bombay; during the day, during dusk and sometimes at night while going
back to the railway station to catch the train back home. But if I remember one
shop with special affection it was the ‘East West Bookshop’ in Baroda situated
in one of the interior roads. That is because of one kind old man. The shop was
small, his heart was big and his knowledge of books immense. Though he used to
deal with customers by just getting the books they wanted, for me he did that
little bit extra. He used to take me to the interiors of the shop and pull out
books which had been lying there untouched, but meant a lot to him. He knew I
was interested for he would then launch into a brief summary of the contents of
the book and recommend to me for reading. Perhaps the most valuable of my
acquisitions from there was a hard bound old edition of Schopenhauer’s The
World as Will and Idea. When I was transferred from Baroda and made my visit to
the shop before I left, he took me to the nearby hotel and bought me lunch.
That was his way of showing affection. He wished me all the luck and then I
left. I did visit the shop once or twice thereafter whenever I came down from
Ahmedabad. Of course I never left without buying a book. Well that was a
relationship and when I touched those books while cleaning them today, I
thought of him. I do not know whether he is there now, but I am pretty sure he
is not, for it has been nearly thirty five years since. I do not know whether
the shop exists, but if it does, then I am sure it will not be the quaint old
shop with a soul.”

Dileep Padgaonkar has aptly summed it up, and I have felt the same as a
lover of books. I have never found myself comfortable with an e-book. Even to
this day I like the book in my hand, to own it and find its rightful place in
the bookshelf. But I have woken up to certain realities as an author. There are
thousands of writers out there who struggle to see their book in print. Only a
miniscule are successful in getting a publisher to accept their manuscript,
which with any luck will be able to find its place in a bookstore. Stacking
books in a bookstore involves holding inventory and this involves cost which
the publisher does not want to risk for a debutant author. I have tackled the
problem of ‘The Writer’s Dilemma’ in my post of 27th July 2014 at http://subbusg.blogspot.in/2014/07/the-writers-dilemma.html
and earlier light hearted posts on the ‘Travails Of An Aspiring Author’. The
only way out for such writers is through having their books published by way of
self-publishing. There would be no rejections by publishing houses and the
costs would be under control as they would be POD print on demand. Anyway I
still have not understood the standards by which publishing houses accept or
reject manuscripts. Many books accepted and published by the publishing houses
have failed to take off, while a number of self-published authors have made it
big. So you see as a self-published
author the digital online stores have become a boon. I do whatever marketing is
possible through the social media and hope for the best, footfalls in a
bookstore do not ensure sales.

So you see my priorities as a book lover and an author are at
loggerheads. But to sum up I can only say that I would still like to see my
book on the shelf of a bookstore and watch surreptitiously with glee some customer
picking up the book and browsing through it